Senior Year Final Reflection

Projects

Magazine Spread

This project was the first involving a professional in the design field. I interviewed an illustrator named Eric Hibbeler, who has worked alongside game studios and design companies. From that interview, I created a four-page magazine spread in his style. Overall, this project took about a month, but along the way, the graphic design server became corrupted and I lost almost all of my progress. Since then, I haven't tried to finish it again, but I might try again over the summer.

Personal Branding / Senior Show

This was an especially difficult project because it was very hard to decide what I wanted to have on my business card, which I had to buy myself. I wasn't easy. I came up with a logo, and layouts for the business card, resumé, and cover letter. This took about three weeks to complete, and I was able to give people my cards during senior show, which was an event where I could showcase my work to parents and some business professionals.

Branding a Service

Here, I had to think of a service, and create a logo and color scheme for it. I created the guitar repair company Medical Instruments. The amount of parts to this project made it pretty long. It consisted of the logo, poster ad, four web ads, billboard, magazine ad, and newspaper ad. It took about one and a half months. It was my first time I tried limiting myself on color usage. The only colors I used were red, black, and white. All of the promotional material is very simple, and I tried incorporating medical puns and big text to make people drawn to it.

My Time In Class

Most of my time in class is devoted to a project. I always try to make something look as good as it can. I sometimes come in after school as well to finish something that I wasn't able to in class. Outside of school, I like to watch videos from other graphic designers to learn more about what goes into certain things like logos or posters. Those have had some influence on how I work.

Areas of Strength

A lot of my strength comes from my knowledge of the software we use. I use Illustrator and Photoshop at home and that can really help in the class. And though I'm not a fantastic artist, I know enough to get me by the sketches portion of some projects. I've also gotten a lot better at thinking of more thumbnails than I was last year. The places I could improve are in group critiques. I'm not great at giving thoughtful input, or much input at all. I can improve by giving my first instinctual thought when I see someone else's project. Other than that, I've improved on almost everything from my past years in class.

Summary

This was my last semester as a high school student, and I'm definitely going to miss this class. I've been taught so much about the world of design, and It'll definitely help me out down the road.